𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

At least one in 10 new homes built under Labour have been needed to house asylum seekers or refugees rather than British families. Conservatives accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of presiding over “a housing catastrophe” after 51,997 asylum seekers were granted refugee status or leave to remain since the General Election.

With the average household in the UK made up of 2.36 people, it means 21,610 homes are required – equivalent to more than 10% of the 212,587 new homes that have been built across the UK in the same time period, according to a Conservative analysis. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “Labour have flung Britain’s borders wide open while simultaneously failing to build enough homes. This is the cost of Labour’s failure, but the Conservatives will not stand by while fairness is torn up.”

The Home Office has vowed to move asylum seekers out of hotels, which currently cost taxpayers £5.77million every day, and place them in “medium-sized” accommodation such as disused student accommodation and blocks of flats. But local authorities are demanding the Government hand any savings to them, with a warning that immigration chaos is creating “unsustainable costs and pressures” across the country.

A Local Government Association (LGA) source said: “We remain keen to work with the Government to co-design the future asylum accommodation and support system across all ages. Any savings from hotel closure could also be rerouted to councils to recognise current unsustainable costs and pressures.

“Asylum and resettlement also affects all councils’ capacity to source temporary accommodation given wider housing system pressures, creating immense pressures in areas with higher numbers.”

The Government’s efforts to close asylum hotels have been given added urgency after Epping Forest District Council sought a court order demanding the removal of 138 asylum seekers from the Bell Hotel. A court of appeal last week overturned an interim injunction to close the hotel, but the main court hearing will go ahead next month and other authorities are set to seek similar rulings.

Councils have already won a pledge from the Home Office that the burden will be shared more evenly across the country, but this is likely to lead to more rows with asylum seekers and refugees sent to shire towns and rural areas that have previously been spared.

In three local authority areas – Crawley in West Sussex, the London borough of Hounslow and the London borough of Hillingdon – at least one in a hundred residents is either an asylum seeker or a refugee as part of the Afghan Resettlement Programme or Homes for Ukraine Scheme. But the figure in some other areas is one in a thousand or less, official data show.

Home Office minister Angela Eagle has pledged to “ensure that individual areas take their fair share of the burden”. Officials are working on a 10-year plan to provide alternative accommodation, but no date has been given for putting the new arrangements into effect beyond a Government pledge to close asylum hotels before the next election.

While attention has focused on hotels, many asylum seekers are already accommodated in ordinary housing acquired by firms contracted by the Home Office, such as Clearsprings Ready Homes, Mears Group and Serco. But the Local Government Association told the Commons Home Affairs Committee this “can make the private rented sector unaffordable for existing residents or reduce availability of affordable accommodation”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “This Government inherited an asylum system in chaos, with tens of thousands of individuals stuck in asylum hotels waiting for their claims to be heard. At its peak, less than two years ago, there were 400 asylum hotels in use at a cost of almost £9million a day.

“We have taken urgent action over the past year to fix that system, doubling the rate of asylum decision-making, and reducing the amount of money spent on asylum hotels by almost a billion pounds in the last financial year.

“We will continue working to reduce the overall number of people in the asylum system, and close all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament, and where asylum accommodation is still required in the interim, we will work with local authorities and other stakeholders to ensure it is provided in a balanced and sustainable way, with local concerns always taken into account.”